Intellectual Property

Intellectual property or IP is a number of different types of legal cartels over creations of the mind, both artistic and commercial, and the analogous fields of law. Under intellectual property law, owners are assured exclusive rights to a variety of subtle assets, such as musical, artistic and literary works; ideas, inventions and discoveries; and words, phrases, symbols, and designs. Some common types of intellectual property include copyrights, patents, trademarks, industrial design rights and secrets of trade in some authorities.

The artistic rights are covered by patent laws, which protect creative works, like books, music, movies, paintings, software and photographs, and give the copyright holder some special right to control the adaptation of the works for a certain period of time. The commercial rights category is cooperatively known as “industrial properties”, because they are typically created and used for industrial or commercial purposes. A copyright may be granted for a novel, useful, and non obvious creation and gives the patent holder a right to avert others from practicing the innovation without a license from the inventor for a certain period of time. A trademark is a characteristic sign which is used to prevent confusion among the products in the market.

Even though many of the legal principles prevailing intellectual property have evolved over centuries, it was only in the 19th century that the term intellectual property began to be used and it is said that by the late 20th century it became common place in the United States of America. An industrial design right safeguards the form of facade, style or design of an industrial object from violation. A trade secret is an item of non public information regarding the commercial practices or proprietary knowledge of a business. The term intellectual property denotes the specific legal rights and not the intellectual work itself. These exclusive rights permit owners of intellectual property to obtain monopoly profits. These profits provide a financial inducement for the formation of the intellectual property, and pay the related development and research costs. The legal monopoly granted by the intellectual property laws are endorsed with significant contributions in the direction of economic growth. Economists estimate that about two-thirds of the value of large businesses in the United States can be drawn to intangible assets.

Intellectual property rights are impermanent monopolies enforced by the state concerning the use of expressions and ideas. Intellectual property rights are usually limited to the non rival goods, which are goods that can be used by many people concurrently. The use of the goods by one person does not leave out use by another. Since a non-rival good may be used by a number of people at the same time, producers would need incentives other than money to create such works. This is compared to rival goods like clothing that may only be used by one person at a time. Monopolies also have inefficiencies where producers will charge more and produce less.

Therefore, the establishment of intellectual property rights symbolizes a trade-off, to balance the interest of society in the formation of non-rival goods, by encouraging their production along with the problems of monopoly power.